


The Fruits of Goblins

by Mertiya



Category: Goblin Market - Christina Rossetti, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Deal with a Devil, Especially when it comes to Sherlock, Every boon has a price, Healing Magic, John is a bit of an idiot sometimes, Let's Write Sherlock Challenge 1, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-08
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-14 07:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/834082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a nearly disastrous case, Sherlock and John share a tense taxi ride back to Baker Street. With emotions running high, they finally arrive back at 221B, and John finally makes a deal with a creature whom he has seen out of the corner of his eye for some time now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Come buy!

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the first Let's Write Sherlock challenge. I'm definitely a sucker for weird, slightly-magic AUs, and I wanted to write something that did something a bit...different. This came out a bit odd and rather dark, but then I do love the tone of Goblin Market, which is what I was trying to capture with this piece. I'm expecting there to be just two or three chapters, but we'll see.

_“Come buy,” call the goblins_

_Hobbling down the glen._

_“Oh,” cried Lizzie.  “Laura, Laura,_

_You should not peep at goblin men.”_

 

      The first time John saw the creature, he thought he was hallucinating.  It wasn’t an unreasonable assumption, considering he hadn’t slept in thirty-six or so hours.  He and Sherlock had been staking out the beach in Sussex, where a mysterious assailant had nearly killed a local mathematics professor.  It had taken Sherlock more time than he thought it should have (didn’t it always?) to deduce that the culprit was in fact a jellyfish blown down from some more usual locale, and, in the meantime, he’d nearly been stung.

      John, who had seen the havoc that had been wreaked on the back of the maths professor, was still shuddering from imagining those puffy, bleeding whorls across the white skin of the man sitting next to him.  He almost reached out and touched Sherlock, but refrained; his friend was looking pensively out the window (no doubt going over every reason he ought to have solved the case faster).  John followed his gaze, and that was when he saw it, reflected in the window of the taxi: a hunched, misshapen thing with long, pointed ears and yellow, slitted eyes.  It looked from Sherlock to John and back, then held out a hand which cupped a round, golden orange.

      _What would you do to keep him safe?_ Something seemed to speak near John’s ear, and then it was gone, and he shook his head and told Sherlock in no uncertain terms that both of them were going straight to bed as soon as they got back to Baker Street.

      The second time he saw it, they were tracking yet another armed assailant through Hyde Park, and instead of a taxi window, John caught a glimpse of the thing in the stagnant, standing water of a duck-pond.  This time he wasn’t running particularly low on sleep, and he felt a moment of panic, but when he looked again, it was gone, and he was able to tell himself he’d just imagined it.

      The third time, it was after Sherlock had very nearly gotten himself killed, and he couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.  Sherlock had gone haring off, with a characteristic complete lack of forethought, the note he’d left for John in what he presumably thought was an ‘obvious’ place hadn’t been seen for several hours, and for some reason the great detective hadn’t bothered with a text.

      When John finally found the note (tucked in the fridge and weighted down with one of Sherlock’s latest experiments), time seemed to be going nightmarishly slow.  Racing down the stairs of Baker Street to catch a taxi, he had the impression of a dark forest looming on both sides of him, just out of the corner of his eye, but when he stopped to glance around, there was nothing out of place, and he couldn’t afford to waste the time.

      It took him too long to flag down a taxi; he had to walk nearly two blocks in order to find an unoccupied one.  Goddammit, why couldn’t Sherlock just _wait_ for him?  Going after a serial killer was risky business even with both of them to watch each other’s backs.

      John was halfway to the address scrawled in Sherlock’s looping, slanted handwriting when he remembered to call Lestrade.  The faint hope he’d had that Sherlock had, for once, gotten in touch with the Yard, was dashed when Lestrade hadn’t heard anything.  John babbled down the address, his voice sounding soft and dull to his ears, as if he were somewhere very large, as opposed to in the tiny confines of the taxi, and then he shut the phone and tried to will the taxi to go faster.  The colors around him seemed oddly dingy, as if real life had turned into a movie with an overly artsy director.

      The place Sherlock had indicated was a little park, barely more than a courtyard between flats, with a small, rather ornate stone fountain in the center.  John didn’t have much time to notice the details, though, because Sherlock was standing on the rim of the fountain, struggling in deadly silence with their suspect, a tenebrous, insubstantial figure whose knife gleamed sharp and wicked in the yellow streetlight.

      As John pelted across the cobbled street toward them, Sherlock’s arm gave out.  The knife flashed forward, once, twice--a swirl of coat, and Sherlock’s blood spattered up, a fine, glittering spray, far redder than it should have been.  He grunted and staggered backward, and then, finally, _finally_ , John was there.  He grabbed the hand with the knife in it, dragged it backward with such force that he felt the small, delicate bones of the wrist snap in his hand.

      Once he’d made sure the assailant was incapacitated, he rushed to Sherlock’s side.  Sherlock was struggling into a sitting position, panting, one hand pressed to his side.  “Don’t look like that, John,” he said irritably.  “He barely scratched me.  My coat is more badly injured than I am.”

      “You _fucking idiot_!”  John wanted to hit him, _would_ have hit him if he hadn’t been hurt.

      “It’s the nature of the work, John.”

      John tried--and failed utterly--to come up with a suitable response.  “Let me see it,” he demanded, and Sherlock drew back his coat and revealed an ugly, shallow gash running the down the length of his ribs.  His skin looked yellow, the blood oozing from the cut appeared black.  He was struck with a sudden wave of nausea, and he had to stop and breathe deeply before digging out the first aid supplies he’d taken to carrying around with him and bandage Sherlock up, grateful, at least, to see that Sherlock had been right--it wasn’t serious.  Which meant, naturally, there was no chance of getting Sherlock to a hospital.

 _Wouldn’t you like to be able to do more than that_? a guttural voice murmured somewhere beside his head, but when he glanced to the side, there was no one there.

      The taxi ride home was tense and silent, but it still had an oddly hazy, dreamlike quality to it.  Sherlock was sulking because John had spent a good ten minutes yelling at him in front of Lestrade.  John was brooding and trying to ignore the fact that he now seemed to see the creature out of the corner of his eye no matter where he was looking.  Not just one creature, anymore, he realized with a start about halfway to Baker Street.  A number of them, as if he were standing in a silent circle of blazing yellow eyes.  By the time they got back, the double vision was making him feel dizzy and sick.

      He forced Sherlock to go to bed after extracting a promise that he would actually sleep, then headed for the kitchen, intending to make himself a cup of tea and relax.  He never made it.

      There was a brief, blurry moment of dizziness.  What he’d thought was the doorframe of Sherlock’s bedroom was nothing but a momentary twisting archway of windborne leaves as he walked down the tall, grass-lined rows of a sunny orchard whose trees were laden with swollen, low-hanging fruit.

      “Come buy!  Come buy!”  The nasal voices reached his ears quietly at first, but getting louder as he approached a number of flat, wooden stalls set between the trees.  The strange, dim lighting which he had felt all day was in full force; everything was washed out and pale except for the fruits lying in their baskets and on their stalls, which glowed ripe and rich.  John’s stomach growled involuntarily.

      The creatures manning the stalls were definitely not human.  They ranged from three to five feet tall, and all of them had the same slitted, yellow eyes John had felt peering at him out of odd corners and crannies lately, but none of them really looked very similar.  There was one with a long, pointed nose and whiskers, another with a bald, scaly head, a third with only one eye and a twisted, knobbly growth where the other one ought to be.

      He was dreaming.  Obvious, really.  Except--it didn’t really feel like a dream.  You didn’t usually realize you were dreaming when you were actually dreaming.  But there wasn’t anything else it _could_ be, was there?  

      As John entered the clearing, a number of the creatures began directing their hoots and hollers in his direction.  Several of them came out from behind the stalls and plucked at his clothes, gabbling what sounded like sales pitches in their varied voices.  It was impossible to understand most of what they were saying amidst the cacophony.  John caught, “...long life, good health, perfect woman...” though he was fairly sure all three phrases came from three different beings.

      “Oy, get off,” he said irritably, but they ignored him, more and more of them rushing up to thrust fruits toward him, until he was close to being overwhelmed by a rushing mob.  He tensed, wondering if he was going to have to fight his way out, when there was a shrill whistle.  All of the merchants turned at the sound, and, grumbling, began to slink back to their stalls, parting like the ebbing of the tide.  

      At the center was the creature that John had seen three times now.  He recognized the stooped shoulders and thick, dark fur.  “What the hell,” he said weakly as it approached him.

      “Doctor Watson,” it said, in a surprisingly deep, melodious voice.  “I have a proposition for you.  Buy and taste of my fruit, and your very touch will be enough to heal your friend of even the most grievous of wounds.”

      John blinked at it.  “Um,” he said, then decided that he had to be dreaming.  Lucid dream, maybe, a really weird one.

      “The price is not so very high,” went on the creature, cajolingly.  “You’ve been wishing for something like this.  Admit it.”

      Subconscious trying to tell him something?  But there was a little wormy tendril inside John’s stomach that said, _What if it’s not a dream?_  Well, that would be pretty bad.  Making deals with shifty-eyed inhuman--things--in a wood was just never a good idea.  He’d consumed enough popular media to know that.  

      He opened his mouth to say _bugger off_ when the image of Sherlock’s pale skin, marred by the jagged cut (and it could have been so much deeper, so much worse, cut him to the bone, the marrow, split his chest open to show everyone that, literally at least, Sherlock Holmes did in fact have a heart) rose to his eyes.   _What would you do to save him?_ the voice had asked as they sat in tense silence in the taxi, and the most visceral reaction that had risen to John’s brain before anything else, before thinking he was tired or hearing things or needed a cup of tea, had been-- _anything_.

      “Okay, yeah.  I have,” he said tersely, and the thing smiled, its slitted eyes narrowing with pleasure.

      “Then perhaps we can do business,” it murmured, crooked tongue slipping out of its mouth to touch its upper lip.

      “I don’t suppose you take cash?” John asked bluntly.

      It shook its head.  “You suppose correctly.  But you’ve more gold than cash upon you.”

      “Eh?” John said, and it reached up a long, long arm (how the hell was its arm long enough to reach his head?) and stopped just short of touching John’s hair as John tensed, body readying to fight.  From out of nowhere, its other hand produced a pair of small, sharp scissors, flashing John a grin full of teeth only slightly blunter than the silvery little blades.

      “You want...hair?”

      The uneasy feeling roiled up in John’s stomach again, because no contract that was sealed with body-parts could ever be good for the participant, but yet again, he saw that messy wound across Sherlock’s ribs, and he took the scissors in hand and snipped off a tuft of hair.  The strands gleamed bright gold as he pressed them into the creature’s hand.  Its smile, if anything, grew wider, and in return, it tossed him a round, red pomegranate, already cracked in half, the ruby-red globules spilling from its insides onto John’s hands.

      “Eat,” it said, and he cautiously scooped some of the seeds up and into his mouth.  The sweet tang that exploded across his tastebuds was like nothing he’d ever tasted before.  Blinding white flashed across John’s vision, turning searing red; when the afterimages faded, he was slumped on the couch in Baker Street, with the words _Just remember, no refunds!_ echoing fadingly inside his skull.

      So it had just been a dream, then.  John found himself shivering a little.  He wasn’t really a superstitious person, but he found himself needing desperately to check on Sherlock, and he almost stumbled across his feet in his haste to make it to the bedroom.

      Sherlock was asleep, his ascetic, sharp-featured face softened a little, his curls dark around his pallid skin, maybe a little paler than usual.  He’d stripped off his shirt, probably because the bandages John had made him put on the cut weren’t very comfortable in conjunction with it.

      John sat on the bed beside him, wondering, in a way he almost never let himself think about, what the depth of his feelings for this man were.  He had, occasionally, been attracted to men before; he just hadn’t pursued it, because it was more of a hassle than he really felt it was worth.  And, to be honest, he wasn’t certain whether “attracted to” accurately described his feelings towards Sherlock in any case.  There was something so all-encompassing about their friendship, a connection John had never had with anyone else.

      He loosened the bandages to make sure the cut was sealing up properly and still didn’t look as if it would need stitches.  He wouldn’t have risked waking Sherlock if he hadn’t known there was no chance of that--Sherlock slept like a corpse in the aftermath of a case, so still and pale that the first time John saw him do it, he’d almost checked his flatmate’s pulse before catching the slight rise and fall of his chest.

      He peeled the bandages back slowly and carefully, paused, and found himself running his fingers slowly down the length of the puffy, injured skin, then stopped in shock when he saw pale, new skin rippling down Sherlock’s torso in the wake of his fingers.  John stared, and his hand automatically went still, hitching up for a long moment before he completed the motion.

      Everything seemed quiet and golden and peaceful; John found himself stroking his hand back down over Sherlock’s now-uninjured chest before he pulled his fingers back.  There was an odd burning sensation in the back of his throat as he gathered up the bandages and pulled a blanket over Sherlock’s sleeping form.

      He was at the door when the pain hit, a line of fire tracing up his rib-cage and doubling him over with the force and suddenness of it.  He stayed like that, panting, for several minutes, as his nerves screamed at him, tingled, sparked with slowly-fading agony, then he made his way deliberately to the bathroom and stripped off his shirt.

      Along his torso, fading into the irregular star-shape of his scar, was a long, irregular, raised white line, the kind of scar that might be left several months after a knife wound, and he was still breathing hard, as tired as if he’d run a marathon.


	2. A Rock of Blue-Vein'd Stone

_White and golden Lizzie stood,_

_Like a lily in a flood,—_

_Like a rock of blue-vein’d stone_

_Lash’d by tides obstreperously,—_

_Like a beacon left alone_

_In a hoary roaring sea._

The gun went off directly between Sherlock’s ribs.  At this range, the sound of the report was shockingly loud.  His mind moved swiftly, as always, even now.  Angle of entry said the bullet had very likely hit his heart; close-range shot said a few minutes of consciousness left at the most.  Chance of survival: less than 1%.

      He folded onto his knees, noting that there was indeed very little pain, merely a feeling of sudden cold.  Limbs locking up, shaking, consciousness already beginning to fade slightly at the edges.  Gun was discarded in front of him; .380 BBM blank-firing revolver, illegal, converted to allow live ammunition.  He hadn’t noticed when the criminal fled the scene.  Not good.

      Hands on his back, voice at his shoulder.  “Sherlock!  Oh my god.”  John.

      “John.”  Voice coming out wrong, too soft, John wouldn’t like soft.

      “Oh my god.  Sherlock.  Hang on, just hang on.”

      Hands on his coat, pulling it off.  John was bending over him, hair falling forward very slightly into his eyes.  Growing out a little ragged.  His last haircut had been uneven.  Too uneven.  Not the normal barber.  Cut off a lock of hair for some reason, maybe to give to someone?  Sentiment.  Kind of thing John would do.

      John’s face blurring now.  No.  Didn’t want to leave John.  Didn’t want to—John’s hands ripping his shirt open, buttons flying across the street.  John’s hands on his chest—what was he doing?  _CPR won’t do much good without a complete heart, John_.

      There was a moment of pure agony.  Sherlock was fairly certain he blacked out from the pain, which was not something he had ever expected to happen.  When his brain fizzed back into coherence, with something like an electric shock, John was sprawled half-across him in the street, barely breathing and covered in Sherlock’s blood.

      Sherlock sat up and discovered that he was uninjured.  There was already a copious amount of blood soaking the area over his chest, but there was no entry wound, nothing but pale, unmarked skin, not even a scar.  At Sherlock’s movement, John’s eyes fluttered slowly.  “…you all right?” he mumbled, his words slurring dangerously.

      For once, Sherlock found himself at a loss for words.  There was an extraordinarily long pause, at least half a minute, while he struggled to find something to say.  Finally, he managed, “I was shot,” which was an idiocy of the first order.

      “Mmm,” John said in the tone of voice that Sherlock knew meant he wanted to avoid a discussion (though how John thought they could possibly avoid this discussion, Sherlock had no idea).

      “John, what happened?” Sherlock asked, which was another phrase he had never expected to utter.  He might be forgiven in this instance, though; his mind groped for a plausible explanation and found none.  Truth be told, he had known there was something strange going on for weeks, ever since the case of the mysteriously disappearing cut, but for once, Sherlock had found himself stymied.  He could find no rational explanation whatsoever.  Repeated examinations of John showed nothing out of the ordinary, other than exhaustion and that one missing lock of hair, and he had been forced almost to reach the conclusion that somehow he had imagined something, dreamed something so real that his conscious mind was incapable of telling truth from fiction.  He’d almost started to believe he was going insane.

      Stupid.  Eliminate the impossible, whatever remained…

      But he hadn’t been able to eliminate the impossible.

      “John,” he bit out.  “John, what is going on, for _god’s sake_.”

      But John’s eyes had gone wide and unfocused, and—good god—how had it taken him this _inexcusable_ amount of time to realize there was something very wrong with John?

      “You’re alive,” John said, and then his eyes rolled up in his head, and he collapsed.

~

      Sherlock paced savagely back and forth in the hospital waiting room.  This was ridiculous.  He needed to see John.  He hadn’t been injured; there could not possibly be anything seriously wrong.  But Sherlock himself should be dead.  Agonizingly terrifying thoughts and ridiculous, impossible superstitions whirled around Sherlock’s head.

      The doctor who came out of the room-- _early forties, married, three children, one in university from his first marriage, other two in primary school, cardiologist with an interest in philosophy--_ looked grave and, worse, puzzled.  Sherlock felt the bottom drop out of his stomach-- _strange, hollow sensation, sentiment?_

      “Mr. Holmes, I take it you’re John’s next of kin?”

      Sherlock was actually surprised for a heartbeat, before the familiar wave of irritation ( _Mycroft_ ) swept over him, followed by an inexplicable surge of gratitude (foreign feeling when applied to his supercilious sibling), but he mastered himself before the doctor could notice and nodded.  “Yes, can I see him?”

      “Shortly, if you’d like, but I’m not sure how lucid he’ll be,” the doctor continued.  “I’m afraid he’s not doing very well.”

      _Bad news_ , Sherlock read in the slight quirk of the doctor’s lips.  “You don’t know what’s wrong with him,” he said bluntly.

      The doctor’s eyes slid away from his.  “Not exactly, no,” he admitted.  “We’ll be running more tests.  My best guess would be rheumatic heart disease, but the presentation is abnormal.  He’s running a high fever, and there’s definitely some sort of inflammation of the heart, but he isn’t responding to typical treatment.”

      Sherlock’s hand went instinctively to his own heart, feeling the phantom bite of the bullet.  This was impossible.  This was _impossible_.  “I need to see him,” he snarled.

      The doctor gave him a sympathetic look, which Sherlock ignored, and then stood aside.  “Try to be quiet, he’s going to need his rest,” he said.

      Sherlock was shocked at the change in John from just a few hours ago.  Before the night’s disastrous events, John had been looking a little peaky, but mostly normal.  Now, there were great dark circles under his eyes, and his face was sunken, hollow, and white, as if he’d been an invalid for months.  There was a fever-flush high on his cheekbones, and he was murmuring a string of words beneath his breath that Sherlock couldn’t quite hear.

      “John,” Sherlock said, and John’s eyes opened, fever-bright and hollow.  He took John’s hand as he sat down beside the bed; the skin was stretched translucent across the knuckles, and there was a fine sheen of sweat glittering everywhere on his skin.  “John, what happened?”  He had to try to get the words out twice, because the first time his voice was nothing but breath and shallow air.

      John’s lips twitched, almost a smile, and he said something that Sherlock couldn’t make out.

      “I couldn’t hear you, John, you’ll have to speak louder.”  Was that a bit not good?  You weren’t supposed to tell sick people to do things, were you?

      John made a clear effort, and the words came out audible, though cracked and hoarse and only halfway meaningful.  “You’re--okay.  Good.  Fruit--fruit worked.”

      “Yes, I’m fine, John, and I shouldn’t be, and you’re not, and you should be.  Why?” Sherlock asked urgently.  “You need to tell me what happened, John.”

      John’s eyes were glassy and his breath was shallow and rough.  “Fruit,” he repeatedly.  “God, I want some fruit, Sherlock, can I have some fruit?”

      “Yes, of course you can,” Sherlock said impatiently.  “I’ll get the hospital staff to bring you some, all right?  But what _happened_?”

      “Fruit,” John whispered again, and then he began to cry.

~

      John was delirious, feverish, heart failing.  He was going to _die_ , and somehow it was Sherlock’s fault.  He didn’t understand how, didn’t understand what could have happened, but he had to fix it, had to find out what had happened somehow.  It didn’t make any _sense_.  It was as if John had taken the injury meant for Sherlock, turned it inside out and was dying slowly of something that should have killed him quickly.

      Sherlock couldn’t stay at the hospital.  He wanted to, didn’t want to leave John’s side, but he knew that all he could do was watch him die slowly if he stayed.  He needed to understand what had caused this.  He needed to solve the mystery of _John_ and _fruit_ and _disappearing gunshot wounds_ , the deadliest, most important mystery he had ever needed to solve, and, what was worse, one that was impossible and made no sense at all.

      Once, when Sherlock was about three years old, Mummy had taken him and Mycroft to the beach.  He’d become fascinated with mapping the way the currents moved beneath the surface of the waves and had spent several hours letting handfuls of sand fall into the ocean and tracking their movements, and he hadn’t noticed that the waves were getting rougher until one of them went over his head.

      Mycroft had pulled him out quickly, but Sherlock still remembered the sudden sensation of utter helplessness as he was picked up violently and flung from the ground with nothing around him but liquid, the feeling of air being slammed from his lungs and his complete inability to stop it.  He had the same feeling now.

      His mind kept running over the same hamster-wheel-rut as he sat in the taxi on the way back to Baker Street.  If there was anything, any possibility, anything at all, it was not within his purview; it was information he had never had, or information that he had deleted.  Clenching his fist, he stared out the window.  If he determined that he’d deleted it, he didn’t know if he would ever be able to delete anything again.  If John--

      No.  John was going to be fine.  He had saved Sherlock; Sherlock would save him.  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it before, after all.  

It was difficult to get himself to take out his phone and begin to try and research what little he had to go on.  His brain kept stopping and starting under the strange heavy feeling of paralysis, and he drove himself onward with a ferocity born of panic.

It took him a maddeningly long time to come up with a number of myths and legends, most of which he had, indeed, deleted (why couldn’t the criminal classes be more culturally inclined?  He wouldn’t have deleted these if they’d seemed at all relevant), and he was back in Baker Street before he had more than the very slimmest of notions.

Supernatural healing prowess was too common an idea, and eventually Sherlock gave up on it.  Some notion of giving as much as you took was somewhat more promising and led him onto the notion of contracts.  Unfortunately, although supernatural contracts were a common thread in mythology, the only sites dealing with them that Sherlock could find were mythological overviews or New Age forums on which every person was either insane or attempting to scam people out of their money.

He had been working in increasing desperation for about five hours, still getting nowhere, when he received an email.  He had been steadfastly ignoring the messages which kept cropping up (mostly from Lestrade, asking him where he was, needing a statement, the usual), but this one had a subject heading entitled _goblin contract?_  Probably nothing, but worth spending the thirty seconds to read through it.

_Dear Mr. Holmes_

 

_My name is Cait Hart.  I can help people who have problems like yours.  I don’t know whether it’s you or your friend, but someone who is important to you has entered into a fey contract, and you want to know how to break it.  Don’t close this email without replying, or they will die.  There are few people who can help you and fewer who are willing.  I suggest you call me when you receive this._

_Yours_

 

_Dr. Cait Hart, Professor of Theater_

_Mulligan College_

_(339)355-4221_

 

      A few minutes’ further research told Sherlock that a woman named Cait Hart was employed at a small American university called Mulligan College.  She had been an employee for just under two years.  He found a picture of a strong-jawed woman with glossy, dark hair looking sternly at the camera through a pair of thin spectacles.  Her face was almost oddly youthful, and the grey streaks along her temple seemed to have been put there for effect.

      Digging a little deeper revealed articles and classes, as well as a bland, relatively unimpressive resume.  The reason for the blandness became apparent when he researched it and found that it was a quiet, difficult-to-detect fiction from start to finish.  The first real record of Cait Hart was as an “unpaid consultant” to Mulligan College, beginning ten years previously.  Scrolling back through the lists of unpaid consultants, Sherlock found that for the past fifty, there had always been one, with the initials C.H.  Curious.  Oddly suggestive, yet impossible.

      Mycroft called to tell him that John’s condition was rapidly worsening.  Sherlock closed his eyes.  What choice did he have at this point?  He picked up the phone and dialed the number he had received.

      “Mr. Holmes, is it?”

      “Yes.  If this is a prank, I assure you I will know, and when I can spare the time--”

      “Don’t bother with threats.  It’s not a joke, it’s not a prank, it’s real, and from the sound of your voice, you don’t have a lot of time.  Your friend, then, or your lover?”

      “Friend,” Sherlock grated out.  “What can you tell me?”

      “Fey contracts,” said Cait Hart in a business-like tone.  “Dangerous at the best of times.  Goblin contracts?  Worse.  The fey in general don’t necessarily cheat you.  Goblin contracts, if they’re not broken, invariably lead to the death of the participant.  From what you’ve been searching in the past few hours, it looks like the goblin market again.  Honestly, doesn’t anyone read the classics?”

      “How did you know what I’ve been searching?” Sherlock settled on.  He wasn’t used to feeling this out of his depth, and it rankled, or would have, if he hadn’t been so deeply overwhelmed with panic.

      “I’ve got a friend who monitors this sort of thing,” Cait replied.  “Computer whiz.  There are really so few resources for people who run into trouble with the fey, and I like to help.”

      “If you like to help, then help, don’t natter on about the classics.”

      “Mmm.”  Cait didn’t sound at all perturbed by his anger.  “It’s difficult with you being so far away, but here’s what we’ll do.  You go read _Goblin Market_ by Christina Rossetti, not as a poem, but as an instruction manual.  I’ll do some research and send you suggestions for how to reach the market.  It’s not as easy as the poem would suggest.  And--good luck.”

The phone went dead.  Sherlock suddenly felt very tired.  Go read _Goblin Market_?  Nonsense.  Why should he read poetry when John was dying?

What else was he going to do, though?  None of this made logical sense.  He had no idea what to do.  There was nothing else he could do.  If Cait Hart was lying, then John would die, and Sherlock had no way of stopping it.  At least this was a chance.

~

Full of grey despair, Sherlock stood in the center of a fairy ring of mushrooms.  This was impossible.  It was not going to work.  It was not going to work, and John was going to die, and it was going to be his fault.  He could feel the overwhelming lethargy tugging at him, pushing him down, trying to force him to admit that this wasn’t rational, that he was going mad.  But if John died, he might as well be mad.

He breathed in through his mouth, expelled the air as three sonorous words that Cait had given him.  The air turned thick and heavy with moisture almost instantly, and Sherlock choked and coughed, blinking as the light changed as well, turning curiously both golden and faded at the same time.  

Sherlock’s heart gave a strange, great thump at the grey-green landscape spread out in front of him.  So Cait Hart had not been insane.  He was not insane.  The only thing he had to do now was to save John.  His mouth quirked humorlessly at that _only_ , but this was for John.  It was simple.

He heard voices wafting down the lanes of the orchard, “Come buy! Come buy!” and he began to move in their direction.

The creatures were as alien as the poem had suggested, but not so alien as to be immune to Sherlock’s ability to observe them.  Two of them had recently been in a fight; one was plotting to murder the other (although if they had been human, Sherlock would have been able to tell when and how, most likely).  One was sleeping with another’s relative--wife or sister or other form of kin.  Sherlock suppressed a sigh.  Sordid.  Boring.  Tedious.

As soon as he stepped into the clearing, the faces of the goblins turned toward him.  Good god, how could John possibly have agreed to anything these creatures offered?  It wasn’t the twisted shape of their bodies that bothered him, but the naked deceit on their faces.  Surely not even John was that trusting.

Guiltily, Sherlock thought back to the cut that had healed so rapidly--the one John hadn’t let him see for several days after the injury (“You’ll interfere with the healing process, Sherlock, honestly.”)  That had been the first time he’d noticed the irregularity of John’s hair.  Had he known?  Had he known, or guessed, what would happen?  Sherlock felt abruptly sick, but brushed it aside.  No time for regrets.

He retrieved a coin from his inner pocket as the goblins swarmed him.  “Yes, I’d like to buy,” he said in response to their repeated clamoring.  “Here is my coin.”

Immediately a dozen hands reached out, but Sherlock held the coin above his head.  “Fruit first, coin second,” he said grimly, and the advice Cait had given him at the bottom of her last email rang hollow in his ears.   _They cannot take what you do not freely give_.  So far her advice had been correct, and he hoped that it would remain so.

The sea of goblins suddenly parted to let through an especially short goblin which nonetheless emanated an aura of authority.

“Fruit first?” it whispered, and Sherlock felt an odd chill go down his spine at the lilting accent.   _Irish,_ his brain supplied, but frighteningly, there was nothing more specific than that; the accent was wrong, off somehow, and he couldn’t place it.  “Very well,” it smirked, holding out a pomegranate in the palm of its hand, the seeds spilling from a crack in the side like the insides of an eviscerated corpse.  Sherlock reached out to take it, but it was snatched back; the quiet, raspy voice of the goblin spoke again, “ _Eat_ ,” it said, and Sherlock pressed firm lips together and shook his head.

He dropped the coin on the grass at the goblin’s feet.  “Give it to me,” he said steadily.  “What kind of merchant are you?”

Yellow, slitted eyes wrinkled with mirth, and all around him, creatures shrieked and hooted.  “A goblin merchant, naturally,” it replied.  “Ah, and if that’s what passes for a great detective nowadays, it is indeed our fruit you will be needing.”  The faint lilt grew stronger on its last statement, almost mockingly.

Small hands on his arms and legs dragged him down, and his knees impacted the ground jarringly.  He was certain there had been grass beneath him, but he felt rocky earth and pressed his lips together against the sudden pain.  The memory of ocean waves battering at him hit again, so sudden and fierce it was almost as if he’d been transported there.  Pinches and scratches sent pinpricks of pain running through his arms and legs.

The leader thrust the pomegranate against his mouth.  A cloying, overpowering stickiness smeared across his nose, lips and chin, but he kept his mouth shut, even as the odor changed from slightly rancid and not at all appealing to a scent he could not place but which reminded him, though he did not know why, of the sudden rush of hedonistic warmth following the prick of a needle in his arm.  He shuddered with the sudden effort it took to resist opening his mouth.

“Open your lips,” whispered the sly voice in his ear, and suddenly it was his own voice, “Try it, just one, just once.”  His own voice, not as a recording, but as he heard it when he spoke, when he thought, and he bit the inside of his lip and shut his eyes, afraid to open his mouth to demand the fruit, in case it was slipped inside.  So far, so poetic.   _Goblin Market_ was proving an adequate guide.

There was a sudden motion, and the voice spoke again, subtly mocking.  “When I consider how my light is spent...”

 _Milton.  On his blindness._  Sherlock’s eyes flew open in time to see the silver knife ( _paring knife, seven years old, primary user was lefthanded, female, mother of three_ ) flash in front of his eyes before the burst of crimson tore the sight away.  The pain hit a moment later, strong and hot, and he didn’t even cry out; his muscles simply clenched in silent agony, and he tried to double over, but dozens of hands held him back.  Shrill laughter burst out around him, and liquid trickled down his face.

The waves were crashing over his head now, cardinal directions reversed, up down and down up, red and grey, sudden image of a television screen exploding in a burst of static.  Pain, pain in his arms, in his legs, dozens of claws pinching and pricking and pressing, scratching and scraping, tearing him raw, and that voice whispering, “Are you certain you wouldn’t like just a taste of that fruit right about now?”  

The fruit was pressed against his face, and he had to stifle a cry as stinging acid touched the open wounds on his face.  Another shriek of laughter, a pair of clawed hands on his nostrils, pinching them together, and if he wanted to breathe he would have to open his mouth and let the salt-water in and drown.  There was already darkness in front of his eyes, black-grey-red, but as his lungs strained and burned he felt his consciousness drifting away.

~

“Sher...lock?  Is that you?”  John.  Two feet away.  Steady drip of an I.V. said hospital room.

“John.”  His voice came out faint.  There was sticky liquid clinging to his face and neck, and he moved clumsily, blindly, over John’s prone form.  “John.”  Repetition.  Meaningless, but comforting.  He almost licked his lips, remembered in time not to.  “I’ve got it.”  

“Hunh?”

 _Stupid.  Dolt.  Need to explain._ “The fruit, John.  Just--drink it.”

“How?  What?  Sherlock?”  He was too confused.  Of course he was confused.  He was dying, feverish.  Pain had left Sherlock dizzy and confused himself.  Enough.  He had to get John to take the fruit juice, and he was too tired to try and explain.  No _need_ to explain, not really.

He squirmed up the bed, too tired to lift himself up on his arms, and found John’s face, fever-hot beneath the skin of his palm.  Sherlock relaxed against John until his juice-covered lips were pressed against John’s.  John gave a soft whimper and barely stirred against him, and Sherlock moved his mouth, trying to encourage John, until finally he felt John’s tongue stirring against his lips.  A soft, eager little noise rumbled in John’s throat against Sherlock’s fingers; one of John’s hands caught at Sherlock’s hair, and then he was kissing Sherlock’s face, feather-light desperate kisses, followed with little kittenish licks of his tongue.  He still seemed out of it, because he was mumbling under his breath, something Sherlock had to strain to hear, but which he eventually made out.

“Dreamed of you like this, love you, I think.  Never told you.  Never will.  Sorry, I’m--sorry.”

 _Love you, I think_.  Sherlock groaned.  John’s fist tightened in his hair, and John’s mouth moved down to his neck.  It felt like the first deep breaths of air flooding his system as Mycroft drew him out of the ocean, the same sudden sensation of the world falling back into place, the same desperation for more, more, _more_ \--

His lips caught at John’s, a long, messy, deep kiss, and John’s arms tightened around him, anchoring him in place.  

For a moment, all he could feel was the sensation of lips on lips, and then the exhaustion and weariness caught up with him, and he felt himself spiraling downward into sleep.

When he woke up, John was looking down at him.

Sherlock’s hands flew to his eyes.  Bruising was evident around both eyes--he must look like a raccoon.  No wonder John appeared so concerned.  “I’m fine,” he said quickly.  John looked thin and pale, but the heavy flush was gone from his cheeks, and his breathing was easy and normal-paced.  He had lost at least a stone, his cheeks pinched and hollow, but he was clearly on the road to recovery.  Finally, he voiced the question he had been unable to get an answer to before, “What did you do?” he asked John, his voice sharp.

John’s eyes slid away from his.  “I...” he let out a little half-laugh.  “I’m not sure.  Thought it was a dream.”  

Sherlock, for once, let it slide.  There would be time later to explain to John with meticulous clarity that he was not allowed to trade his life for Sherlock’s (and perhaps Sherlock ought to put some thought into his own safety, if his recklessness would be met so relentlessly with John’s own.)        Besides, there was a more pressing matter to attend to.  “What do you remember about last night?” he asked, trying not to sound as urgent, as open, as _fearful_ , as he felt.  God, _sentiment—_ and yet, he was floating, buoyant, too light to sink.

      John’s light eyes caught at his.  “I didn’t dream that, did I?” He flushed.  “Look—it’s pretty hazy, and I’m not sure how much you were—on board with what was happening.  I mean, I’m not sure—“

      Sherlock kissed him, fierce and possessive and angry, then pushed him back almost immediately.  “I was on board with it.  If you _must_ use colloquialisms.”

      “Yeah, well—good.  Yeah.  That’s—good.”  John’s smile was small but growing.

      “You’re an idiot,” Sherlock bit out, and John just kept smiling.  “Never do that again,” he continued, and John cocked his head at him.  “Please,” Sherlock continued a little more quietly, and the smile faded slightly.  Then John gave a short, sharp nod and kissed Sherlock on the cheek, then embraced him.

      “You know you’re going to get kicked out when someone finds you in here,” he said.

      “Mmmm,” Sherlock responded.

      “You’re not allowed to pitch a fit at the nurses for doing their job.”

      Sherlock’s second _mmmm_ was slightly disappointed.  John cleared his throat.

      “Oh, very well,” Sherlock answered.  He glanced across to his reflection in the window, his face thin, his eyes staring out of twin puffy rings of dark bruises.  _They cannot take what you do not freely give._

      He smiled suddenly and kissed John’s head.  “You’re mine, and I don’t believe I will be giving you up,” he murmured.

      “What did you say?”

      “Oh, nothing.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who is interested, Cait Hart is an OC of mine (well, sort of--she is based on a character I played in a LARP, so I was given the bare bones of the character, but I fleshed her out a fair bit on my own) who really would know about this sort of thing, considering she's fey herself, though she spends a lot of time in our world.


End file.
